#64 - Write your SaaS Growth

Modern page or Long Form copy?

Oct 14, 2023

Welcome 355 SaaS Founders, Tech Entrepreneurs, and Marketers to the 64th edition of Write your SaaS Growth Newsletter:

In this edition, we discuss:

Content Marketing: Decoding Loom’s Marketing Success
Cold Email: 7 cold email principles to make more sales
SEO: 13 On-Page SEO Checklist
Copywriting: Test: Long form copy vs Modern page for your SaaS
Social Media Marketing: 14 tips to grow an audience for your brand

Let’s GO!

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Content Marketing 📈

Decoding Loom’s Marketing Success.

Ross shares that Loom was just acquired by Atlassian for $985M dollars. Almost 1 Billion. Here's a few things about Loom's growth that I loved watching over the last few years that marketers can learn from -- Especially those in B2B SaaS.

B2B Doesn't Have To Be Boring Loom launched a candle that smells like "Cancelled Meetings" as a way to further position themselves as the leader in replacing meetings for Loom usage.
So many marketers are afraid to try things like this but this idea resonated with so many people and took off as a viral hit. People loved the creativity and it positioned Loom exactly how the team wanted to be positioned.
Listen To & React To Customers Over the years, I've received a handful of surveys from Loom asking for feedback on features and the product. One feature that Loom users (myself included) always wanted in the early days was the ability to combine clips.
Loom heard this feedback loud and clear and made sure it became a part of their roadmap. Once it was live, they didn't just roll it out in the app and call it a day.
The team communicated the launch of this feature with intention and ensured that their customers knew that this most requested feature [great copy btw] was officially live and available for their users.
Agile Messaging Over The Years Loom changed and modified their value proposition / message multiple times over the years.
Whether it was simply "video recording, simplified" or "Say it with video" the team adjusted and experimented with messaging with the intention of driving better conversions, sales and aligning with their brand promise.
More marketers need to be willing to experiment with their messaging and evolve with time.
True Product-Led Growth The most important growth factor for Loom is the built in viral loop of using Loom. Over the last two years, I think our team has introduced 15-20 organizations to the power of Loom simply by sharing Looms with them.
When you send a Loom to someone -- they consume that content and experience the magic of the product. From there, they start to realize how they too could benefit from this screen recording software and put in a purchase request to sign up for their team / org.

The viral loop for Loom is real.

SEO

13 On-Page SEO checklist.

Sarvesh shares 13+ OnPage SEO tips. He uses this exact checklist to rank sites in highly competitive niches! Here you go:

Does the H1 contain the primary Keyword?
Is there a logical heading hierarchy? H1 → H2 →H3
Are there relevant images in the article?
Do the images have alt text?
Are author bios & credentials highlighted?
Is the content optimized for featured snippets?
Does the article have a crisp intro?
Are there relevant videos in the article?
Does the article have internal links?
Do headings focus on target keywords?
Does the URL structure follow a SEO-friendly format?
Are meta descriptions compelling and contain target keywords?
Does the content actually provide value and solve the reader's queries?

Sales 📈

7 questions to never ask during your sales meets.

Jeremy shares 7 sentences to NEVER say in a sales conversation (after $279M in closed sales):

NO: What’s it gonna take for you to buy my product today?
YES: John, would this be a potential solution for you?
NO: I’m just following up / I’m just checking in.
YES: Hey John, It’s Jeremy, I just had time to get back to you.
NO: I’m so sorry that I’m late.
YES: I appreciate your patience. I’m just a little bit behind schedule.
NO: Go ahead and sign the contract here…
YES: Just need you to authorize the agreement…
NO: Okay, well…when do you want me to call you?
YES: It might be hard to randomly get a hold of me like that with my schedule. I can pull up my calendar and have you book a specific time with me so that way you don’t have to chase me down and vice versa. Would that help you more?
NO: You should go with us because XYZ.
YES: Well, you know…I’m not quite sure that you should yet. I’d need to learn a bit more to see if we can actually help you.
NO: What do you want to think about?
YES: Before I leave…what were you wanting to go over in your mind, just so I know what questions you might have when we talk tomorrow?

🧰 Marketing Tech Stack to Add this Week! 🧰

SaaS founders often struggle to keep multiple platforms for their marketing efforts in various channels.

It’s important to do SEO, content marketing, competitor research,
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Copywriting 📈

How good is long form copy for your results? Let’s test it out!

Logan put long-form copywriting to the test.

I sent 2,112 people to two different styles of landing pages:

Modern Page → More visuals and a VSL Copy Page → Less visuals
Long-form copy

Within the first 24 hours we had a clear winner (5.48% conversion).

Here are the results:

I want to start off by giving you a little context... → The goal of this page was to sell a $147 course for a limited time before the price rose to $247 → We tested both pages on warm and 'lukewarm' traffic (the winner converted cold traffic as well)

Here's how I tested it: The night before the sale I segmented the most active subscribers into two tags. That night I sent them both the same email with different links. The goal was to send them an exciting “You’re the first to know!” email and pick out the page that was more likely to do well.
The next morning we found that the Copy Page converted 20% more sales! So right then I duplicated that page for all socials so that we could track conversions across a variety of different channels. We saw the Copy Page conversion rate hovering around 4.5% for the next few days across his email list and organic traffic from TikTok and Instagram.
But I wanted to test the other page to truly determine the winner. So I swapped out the links and put the Modern Page in the bio of his TikTok. We had ~115 clicks within a short time and the page converted at 2.12% (so not as good). Now we had solid evidence that this page just wasn’t going to cut it. For the rest of the sale, I pushed the Copy Page and continued making little tweaks to hopefully increase conversions.
Some things I did that started to raise conversions: → Added a payment plan option (3 x $57) → Shortened the checkout page (had this idea) For the last 16 hours of the launch, we ran TikTok ads to the Copy Page and saw a slight return on spend (with a 1.32% conversion rate). Yesterday I tallied up the final results… Modern Page converted at 2.38% Copy Page converted at 5.48%
There are a few things I want to say that will give some better context: → The Modern Page was only pushed at the beginning of the sale (conversion rates are highest at the end of the sale). → The Modern Page saw warm traffic from email as well as organic traffic from TikTok. If we were to take into account the organic traffic for the Copy Page then the conversion rate would be just under 3% (still better but much lower).
With these ‘corrections’ added in, the pages converted quite close to one another. The Copy Page did convert better, but I know the Modern Page could’ve been improved upon with the knowledge we have now (whereas the Copy Page is nearly as good as it’ll get).
My Final Conclusion: Long-form copy doesn’t lose. But considering I was marketing to a shorter attention span audience (mainly TikTok-focused traffic) we can see that the Modern Page has its place. In the future, I will likely use a combination of the two. It’ll include shorter bursts of copy with more visuals of the offer itself.
The Copy Page handled objections better whereas the Modern Page was more focused on the offer at hand (and this is where the page truly fell short). It’s something that can be improved and in my opinion… Outperform the ‘extreme’ long-form copy.
But I can’t say that just yet because it lost this time. After looking over the pages now I can confidently say that the Copy Page was written better. That’s something I’ll learn from and improve upon next time. And I know you’d like to learn from it too.

Social Media Marketing 📈

14 tips to grow an audience for your brand.

Charlie shares 14 pieces of advice to grow your audience faster:

Likes and views are not the most important metric, profile visits are. More profile visits = more people following.
Talk about YOU not other people. Literally 90% of my top posts were talking about me.
Use long form posts with media. You get an algo boost and catch attention on the timeline.
Write about stuff YOU have personally done. Content from real experiences hits different.
Reply to every reply you get in the first 2-3 hours. You get a massive algo boost by replying back.
Mention your milestones and wins often. People want to follow winners.
Prompt people to comment without specifically asking with clever writing
Frameworks and Lists of lessons, mistakes, habits etc outperform complex writing
Motivational content is a big winner. Your readers want to feel good not depressed.
Use trending topics get far higher reach (algo changes, chatgpt etc)
Your visuals need to be eye catching. You're looking to stop the scroll so use bright colors as a pattern break.
Use longer videos embedded within long form posts. The more time your audience watches the more your post is pushed in the algo.
When people engage with you, engage with them back. Not just on your own posts but on theirs too. They'll keep coming back because you make the effort.
Have controversial takes and unique angles. They drive tons of profile views because people want to know what else you think.

How can we help each other? 🥅

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Thanks for reading! SaaSwrites is a humble attempt to help SaaS founders and marketers grow their SaaS.

See you next Saturday.

Ricky,

SaaSwrites

P.S. If you liked this edition, it would mean the world to us if you share it with your friends. :) Thank you in advance!

Write your SaaS Growth